The Apostolic Mandate (1 of 6)

Mon 11 Feb 2013

Jesus authority to do miracles came from the Father, who SENT him. We are also 'apostolic' because we are SENT, as as ambassadors of heaven, to fulfil our task with kingly authority. It is important we discover for ourselves what God has called us to do, and passionately pursue the mission that God has wired into our heart. It requires we take ownership of it; see people as God sees them, and execute on earth the judgements of heaven.

As in the other seminar we'll have some activations for you to do, and the activations are to develop and to build your inner life, so let's start with Session One. You see the sessions, we've outlined there various things, one of them I'll break into two. Number one is on the apostolic mandate; number two is on spiritual territory and number three, on how you exercise spiritual authority, then four, how you exercise it in your own life. Then we want to speak about your authority to minister to people, and then give you some practical things on how to build your spirit man, build the inner man, because everything you do that flows in the realm of the spirit, requires you strengthen your inner man. If we have some time we'll share with you some practical things just on ministering the spirit and how to flow with the Holy Ghost.

We will have some activations, things for you to do, because that will help you just get your spirit alive, and we'll give you some practical things of what you can do to raise the spiritual energy in your life, and also how you actually go about releasing spiritual authority. Okay then, so let's look on 1.1 and everything's got pages to it, so they're all numbered so we can find them very easily. So firstly the apostolic mandate, and let me ask you this question: if you knew that where you live in the community, God had sent you there, because He had something for you to accomplish, how would that affect the way you relate to the people and how you lived your life? If you believe that the workplace that you are working in, God actually sent you there with an assignment, how would that affect the way you relate to all the other workers, and the way you treat people, and the way you respond to problems and difficulties?

If you believe that wherever you go, you are a person on assignment, how would that affect the way you would relate to people, and to struggles and pressures and difficulties that come? I believe that if we thought that way it would change totally how we live our life. It's just we don't see we're on assignment, we don't see that at all. We just get busy with our life and so what I want to do in this first session is just look at the area of the apostolic mandate. We have a tendency to think that to become a Christian means that you come to Jesus, you're connected to Him, the spirit of God is in you, and then you're going to go to heaven. This is only a half of the story, and if you've only got a half of the story, then you haven't really got it all at all, so the full story is this: that when we receive Jesus into our life, the spirit of God comes in, we are connected to the spirit of God. We're connected to heaven, but we are given a mandate to restore the community we live in, or to change and bring what is around us into harmony with heaven. We're called to bring heaven into the earth.

Now this is the missional aspect of the church that is every believer's calling. We tend to think well missionaries are just people you send out overseas but no, the reality is the church is called to be missional in mind. In other words every person is a missionary, a sent person. Every person is called to embrace the missional aspect of what God has called them to do, so notice what it says here. Just have a look in first of all understanding the apostolic mandate. After these things - after what things? After Jesus had sent 12 disciples out, and the ministered in the power of the Holy Ghost and delivered people and healed people, it says He appointed another 70 and sent them out two by two before His face into every city and place He Himself was about to go, Luke 10:1. So Jesus had already deployed 12 apostles, but the Bible says He looked and He saw the harvest was so great, so He then got another 70 and launched them out in two by two. So He commissioned them, and they had the same commissioning that the apostles had. They were called to do exactly the same, bring the gospel, heal the sick, cast out demons, raise the dead, bring heaven to earth wherever they went. It says they weren't apostles, they were just followers of Christ, but they had the same mission that the apostles had.